Chapter M: H. Catherwood (2)

Mr. Pegram looked disturbed. It was with him a fixed principle never to disoblige a customer, and he saw that he was disobliging at least half a dozen. On the other hand, he was not prepared to face his wife should he so daringly disregard her wishes as to keep the store open half an hour later than usual. He pondered for a few moments, and then his face suddenly brightened, and he said, "If one of you gentlemen that passes my house on your way home would undertake to put coal on the fire, put the lights out, lock the door, and bring me the key, the store's at your disposal till ten o'clock; and I'm only sorry I can't stay myself."

Two or three immediately volunteered, but as the schoolmaster and Mr. Dickey were the only ones whose way lay directly past Mr. Pegram's door, it was decided that they should divide the labors and honors between them.

"I'd like you not to stop later _than_ ten," said Mr. Pegram deprecatingly, as he buttoned his great-coat and drew his hat down over his eyes, "for I have to be up so early, since that boy cleared out, that I need to go to bed sooner than I mostly do."

Compliance with this modest request was readily promised, good-nights were exchanged, and the lessened circle drew in more closely around the stove, for several of the company had reluctantly decided that, all things considered, it would be the better part of valor for them to go when Mr. Pegram went.

There was a few minutes' silence, and then Mr. Dickey said impatiently, "We're all ready, Uncle Jabez. Why don't you fire away, so's to be through by ten o'clock?"

"I was a-thinkin' which one I'd best tell him," said Uncle Jabez mildly. "They're all convincin' to a mind that's open to convincement, but I'd like to pick out the one that's most so."

"There's the one about Alviry Pratt's grandfather," suggested Mr. Crumlish encouragingly.

"No," mused the old man. "I've no doubt of that myself, but then it didn't happen to me in person, and I've a notion he'd rather hear one I've experienced than two I've heard tell of."

"Of course I would, Uncle Jabez," said Mr. Birchard kindly, but with an amused twinkle in his eyes. "You take your own time: it's only just struck nine, and there's no hurry at all."

"Supposin' I was to tell him that one about my first wife?" said the old man presently, and with an inquiring look around the circle.

Several heads were nodded approvingly, and Mr. Crumlish said, "The very one I'd 'a' chosen myself if you'd ast me."

Thus encouraged, Uncle Jabez, with a sort of deliberate promptness, began: "We married very young, Lavina and me,--too young, some said, but I never could see why, for I had a good farm, with health and strength to carry it on, and she was a master-hand with butter and cheese. At any rate, we thriv; and if we had plenty of children, there was plenty for 'em to eat, and they grew as fast as everything else did. She wasn't what you'd fairly call handsome, Lavina wasn't, but she was pleasant-appearin', very,--plump as a pa'tridge, with nice brown hair and eyes and a clean-lookin' skin. But it was her smile in particular that took me; and when she set in to laugh you couldn't no more' help laughin' along with her than one bobolink can help laughin' back when he hears another. She was the tenderest-hearted woman that ever breathed the breath of life: she couldn't bear to hurt the feelin's of a cat, and she'd go 'ithout a chicken-dinner any day sooner'n kill a chicken. As time passed on and she begun to age a little, she grew stouter 'n' stouter; but it didn't seem to worry her none. She'd puff and blow a good bit when she went up-stairs, but she'd always laugh about it, and say that when we was rich enough we'd put in an elevator, like they had at a big hotel we saw once. It would suit her fine, she said, to set down on a cushioned seat and be up-stairs afore she could git up again. Now, you needn't think I'm wanderin' from the p'int," and Uncle Jabez looked severely at Mr. Dickey, who was manifestly fidgeting. "All you folks that have lived about here all your lives knew Lavina 'ithout my tellin' you this; but Mr. Birchard he's a stranger in the neighborhood, and it's needful to the understandin' of my story that he should know just what sort of a woman she was,--or is, as I should say."

Mr. Dickey subsided, while Mr. Birchard tried to throw still more of an expression of the deepest interest and attention into his face. He must have succeeded, for the old man, going on with his story, fixed his eyes more and more frequently upon those of the young one. They were large, gentle, appealing blue eyes, with a mildly surprised expression, which Mr. Birchard found exceedingly attractive. Whether or not the fact that the youngest of Uncle Jabez's children, a daughter, had precisely similar eyes, in any way accounted for the attraction, I leave to minds more astute than my own.

"You may think," the narrator resumed, when he felt that he had settled Mr. Dickey, "whether or not you'd miss a woman like that, when you'd summered and wintered with her more'n forty year. She always said she hoped she'd go sudden, for she was so heavy it would 'a' took three or four of the common run of folks to lift her, and she dreaded a long sickness. Well, she was took at her word. We was settin', as it might be now, one on one side the fire, the other on t'other, in the big easy-cheers that Samuel--that's our oldest son, and a good boy, if I do say it--had sent us with the fust spare money he had. She'd been laughin' and jokin', as she so often did, five minutes afore. Gracie--she was a little thing then, and, bein' the youngest, a little sassy and sp'iled, mebbe--had been on a trip to the city, and she'd brought her ma a present of a shoe-buttoner with a handle a full foot long.

"'There, ma,' she says, laughin' up in her mother's face; 'you was complainin' about the distance it seemed to be to your feet: here's a kind of a telegraft-pole to shorten it a little.'

"My, how we did laugh! And Lavina must needs try it right away, to please Gracie; and she said it worked beautiful. But whether it was the laughin' so much right on top of a hearty supper, or the bendin' down to try her new toy, or both, she jest says, as natural as I'm speakin' now, 'Jabez, I'm a-goin'--' and then stopped. And when I looked up to see why she didn't finish, she was gone, sure enough."

His voice broke, and he stopped abruptly. Mr. Birchard, without in the least intending to do it, grasped his hand, and held it with affectionate warmth for a moment.

"Thank you, young man, thank you kindly," said Uncle Jabez, recovering his voice and shaking Mr. Birchard's hand heartily at the same moment. "You've an uncommon feelin' heart for one so young.

"To say I was lonesome after she went don't say much; but time evens things out after a while, or we couldn't stand it as long as we do. Gracie she settled into a little woman all at once, as you may say, and seemed older for a while than she does now. The rest was all married and gone, but one boy,--a good boy, too. But they came around me, comfortin' and helpin', though each one of 'em mourned her nigh as much as I did myself; and after a while, as I said, I got used, in a manner, to doin' 'ithout her."

Here he made a long pause, with his eyes intently fixed upon the darkness of the adjoining store-room. The heat from the stove had become too great after the shutting of the shutters, and one of the men had opened an inner door for ventilation.

Now, as one pair of eyes after another followed those of the old man, there was a sort of subdued stir around the circle, and the schoolmaster, to his intense disgust, caught himself looking hastily over his shoulder,--the door being behind him.

Mr. Dickey broke the spell by suddenly rising, with the exclamation, "I think we're cooled off about enough; and, as I'm a little rheumaticky to-night, I'll shut that door, if you've none of you no objections."

There was a subdued murmur of assent, the door was closed, and Uncle Jabez returned to the thread of his discourse:

"Lemme see: where was I? Oh, yes. You may think it a little strange, now, but I didn't neither see nor hear tell of her for a full six months. If I was makin' this story up, and anxious to make a _good_ story of it, you can see, if you're fair-minded, that I'd say she came back right away. Now, wouldn't I be most likely to? Say?"

He appealed so directly to Mr. Birchard, pausing for a reply, that the sceptic was obliged to answer in some way, and, with a curious sort of reluctance, he said slowly, "Yes--I suppose--I'm sure you would."

This seemed to satisfy Uncle Jabez, and he went on with his story:

"I came home from town one stormy night, about six months after she died, pretty well beat out,--entirely so, I may say. I'd been drivin' some cattle into the city, and I'd had only a poor concern of a boy to help me. The cattle was contrai-ry,--contrai-rier'n common; and I remember thinkin', when the feller at the drove-yard handed me my check, that I'd earned it pretty hard. That's the last about it I do remember. I s'pose I must 'a' put it in my pocket-book, the same as usual; but I rode home in a sort of a maze, I was so tired and drowsy, and I'd barely sense enough to eat my supper and grease my boots afore I went to bed. I had a bill to pay the next day, and I opened my pocket-book, quite confident, to take out the check. It wasn't there. I always kep' a number of papers in that pocket-book, and I thought at fust it had got mislaid among 'em: so I turned everything out, and unfolded 'em one by one, and poked my finger through a hole between the leather and the linin', and made it a good deal bigger,--but that's neither here nor there,--and before I was through I was certain sure of one thing,--- that wherever else that check was, it wasn't in that pocket-book. Then I tried my pockets, one after the other,--four in my coat, four in my overcoat, three in my vest, two in my pants: no, it wasn't in any of them, and I begun to feel pretty queer, I can tell you. It was my only sale of cattle for the season; I was dependin' on it to pay a bill and buy one or two things for Gracie; and, anyhow, it's no fun to lose a hunderd-dollar check and feel as if it must have been bewitched away from you. I rode back to the drove-yard, though I wasn't more'n half rested from the day before, and they said they'd stop payment on the check and give me a chance to look right good for it, and if I couldn't find it they'd draw me another. You see, they knowed me right well, and they wasn't afraid I was tryin' to play any sort of a game on 'em. Still, it wasn't a pleasant thing to have happen, for, say the best you could of it, it argued that I'd lost a considerable share of my wits. So, when I come home, I felt so kind of worried and down-hearted that I couldn't half eat my supper; and that worried Gracie,--she was a thin-skinned little critter, and if I didn't eat the same as usual she'd always take it into her head there was something wrong with the victuals. I fell asleep in my cheer right after supper, and slept till nine o'clock; and then Gracie woke me, and ast me if I didn't think I'd better go to bed. I said yes, I s'posed I had; but by that time I was hungry, and I ast her what she had good in the pantry. She brightened up wonderful at that,--though when I come to look closer at her I see she'd been cryin',--and she said there was doughnuts, fresh fried that day, and the best half of a mince pie. I told her that was all right so far as it went, but I'd like somethin' a little solider to begin with: so she found me a few slices of cold pork and one of her cowcumber pickles, and I eat a right good supper. She picked at a piece of pie, by way of keepin' me company, but she didn't eat much. Now, I tell you this, which you may think isn't revelant to the subject, to let you see I went to bed comfortable. We laughed and talked over our little supper, and pretended we was city-folks, on our way home from the theater, gettin' a fancy supper at Delmonico's. And I forgot all about the check for the time bein', as slick and clean as if I'd never had it nor lost it. But, nevertheless, when I went to sleep I begun to dream about it, and was to the full as much worried in my dream as I was when I was awake. I seemed to myself to be huntin' all over the house, in every hole and corner I could think of, and sometimes I'd come on pieces of paper that looked so like it outside I'd make sure I'd found it, and then when I opened 'em they'd be ridickilous rhymes, 'ithout any sense to 'em; when all of a sudden I heard Lavina's voice, as plain as you hear mine now. It seemed to come from a good ways off just at first, callin' 'Father,'--she always called me 'Father,' partly because she didn't like the name of Jabez, and it is a humbly name, I'm free to confess,--and then again nearer, 'Father;' and then again, as if it was right at the foot of the stairs. And this time it went on to say, loud and plain, so's 't I could hear every word, 'You look in the little black teapot on the top shelf of the pantry, where I kep' the missionary money, and see what you'll find.' And with that I heard her laugh; and I'd know Lavina's laugh among a thousand. I was too dazed like to do it right away, and I must 'a' fell asleep while I was thinkin' about it, for when I woke up it was broad daylight and Gracie was callin' to me to get up. But I hadn't forgot a word that Lavina'd said, and I went for that teapot as quick as I was dressed, and there was the check, sure enough, in good order and condition!"

He paused to look round at his audience and see the effect of this statement, and the schoolmaster took advantage of the pause to ask, "Were you in the habit of putting money in that teapot for safe-keeping, Uncle Jabez?"

"Young man, I was not," said Uncle Jabez emphatically, and evidently annoyed both by the question and by the tone in which it was uttered. "It was a little notion of Lavina's, and I'd never meddled with it, one way or the other. But I'd left it be there after she died, because I liked to look at it. I'd no more 'a' dreamed of puttin' that check in it than I would of puttin' it into Gracie's work-box. But there it was, and how it come there it wasn't vouchsafed me to know.

"I think it must have been a matter of three or four months after this, though I wouldn't like to say too positive, that I fell into my first and last lawsuit. A man I'd always counted a good neighbor made out he'd found an old title-deed which give him a right to a smart slice off'n my best meadow-land. It dated fifty years back, and old Peter Pinnell, that was the only surveyor in the township at that time, made out he recollected runnin' the lines; and when McKellop, the feller that claimed the track, took old Pinnell over the ground, to see if he could find any landmarks that would help to make the claim good, they found a big pine-tree jest where they wanted to find it, and cut into it at the right height to find a 'blaze,' if there was one. The rings was marked as plain as the lines on a map, and when they'd cut through fifty, there was the mark, sure enough, and McKellop's lawyer crowed ready to hurt himself. I was a good deal cut down, I can tell you, for I could see pretty well that it was goin' to turn the scale; and when supper-time came, Gracie could hardly coax me to the table. I said no, I didn't feel to be hungry; for I couldn't get that strip of meadow-land out of my head. And it wasn't so much the value of the land, either, though I couldn't well afford to lose it, as it was the idee of McKellop's crowin' and cacklin' all over the neighborhood about it. But Gracie looked so anxious and tired that I come to the table, jest to satisfy her; and I found I was hungry, after all, for I'd been trampin' round the farm most of the day, lookin' for some landmark or sign that would prove my claim, that dated seventy years back. I recollect we had soused pigs' feet for supper that night; and I don't think I ever tasted better in my life. I eat pretty free of them, as I always did of anything I liked, and we wound up with some of her canned peaches, that she'd got out to coax me to eat, and cream on 'em 'most as thick as butter: she had a skimmer with holes into it that she always skimmed the cream with for our own use. She'd made as good a pot of coffee as I ever tasted. And when I'd had all I wanted, I felt a good deal better, and I says to her,--'I'll fret over it no more, Gracie: if it's his'n, let him take it 'ithout more words.'

"She read me a story out of the paper that made us both laugh right hearty, and then a chapter, as usual, and then we went to bed. And all come round jest as it did afore. I thought I was roamin' about the farm, as I had been pretty nigh all day; but things was changed round, somehow, and the further I went the more mixed up they got, till, jest as I'd found the pine-tree, I heard Lavina's voice, the same as I'd done afore,--first far, and then near,--sayin', 'Father;' and the third time she said it, when it sounded close to, she went on to say, 'He's done his cuttin', now do you do yours. You cut through twenty more rings, and you'll find the blaze that marks _your_ survey. And then thank him kindly for givin' you the idee. The smartest of folks is too smart for themselves once in a while.' And with that she laughed her own jolly, hearty laugh; but that was the last she said; and I laid there wonderin' and thinkin' for a while, and then dropped off to sleep. But it was all as clear as a bell in my head in the morning, and I had McKellop and old Peter at the pine-tree by eight o'clock. I'd sharpened my axe good, I can tell you, and it didn't take me long to cut through twenty more rings, and there, sure enough, was the blaze; and if ever you see a blue-lookin' man, that man was McKellop; for as soon as old Peter see the blaze he recollected hearin' his father tell about the survey; he recollected it particular because the old man was a good judge of apple-jack, and he'd said that _my_ father'd gi'n him some of the best, that day the survey was made, that he'd ever tasted. And Peter said he reckoned he could find something about it in his father's books and among some loose papers he had in a box. And, sure enough, he found enough to make my claim as clear as a bell and make McKellop's as flat as a pancake. Now, what do you think of _that_, hey?"

Once more the old man peered into Birchard's face, and the schoolmaster answered one question with another, after the custom of the country:

"Did you ever know anything about the blazed tree before McKellop found the blaze?"

"When I come to think it over, I found I did," said Uncle Jabez, falling all unconscious into the trap set for him. "I hadn't no papers about it, but my father had told me all the ins and outs of it when I was a boy, and it had somehow gone out of my mind."

"Ah!" said the schoolmaster.

"I don't know what you mean by 'Ah' in this connection," said Uncle Jabez, speaking with unwonted sharpness; "but if you're misdoubtin' what I tell you I may as well shet up and go home."

"I don't doubt your word in the least, Uncle Jabez; I assure you I don't," Mr. Birchard hastened to say. "And I'm deeply interested. I hope you will go on and tell me all your experiences of this kind. I've heard and read a good many ghost-stories; but in all of them the ghosts were malicious creatures, who seemed to come back chiefly for the fun of scaring people out of their wits. Yours is the first really benevolent and well-meaning ghost of which I have ever heard; and it interests me immensely; for I never could see why a person who was all goodness and generosity while he--or she--was alive should turn into an unmitigated nuisance after dying. I should think, if they must needs come back, they might just as well be pleasant about it and make people glad to see--or hear--them."

"That's exactly the view I've always taken," said Mr. Crumlish modestly; "and one reason I've never felt to doubt any of Uncle Jabez's stories is that all the ghosts he's ever seen or heard tell of have been decent-behaving ghosts, that didn't come back just for the fun of scaring people to death."

"That's so; that's so," said the old man, entirely mollified, and hearing no note of sarcasm in the schoolmaster's rapidly-uttered eloquence. "If any one of 'em was to behave ugly," he continued, "it would shake my faith in the whole thing considerable; for I couldn't bring myself to believe that anybody I've ever knowed could be so far given over as to want to be ugly after dyin'."

"Well, now, I don't know," said Mr. Dickey argumentatively. "I _hev_ knowed certain folks that it seems to me would stick to their ugliness alive or dead, and, though I've never seen no appearances of any kind, as I may say, I can believe jist as easy that some of 'em come back for mischief as that others come back for good."

There was a few minutes' constrained silence after this remark. Mr. Dickey's first wife had been what is popularly known as "a Tartar," and there was a generally current rumor that as the last shovelful of earth was patted down on her grave he had been heard to murmur, "Thanks be to praise, she's quiet at last." The idea of her reappearance in her wonted haunts was indeed a dismaying one, especially as Mr. Dickey had recently married again, and, if the gossips knew anything about it, was repeating much of his former painful experience. The silence, which was becoming embarrassing, was finally broken by the schoolmaster.

"Had you any more experiences of the kind you have just related, Uncle Jabez?" he asked, in tones of such deep respect and lively interest that Uncle Jabez responded, with gratifying promptness,--

"Plenty, plenty, though perhaps them two that I've just told you was the most strikin'. But it always seemed to me, after that first time, that Lavina was on hand when anything went wrong or was likely to go wrong; and ef I was to tell you all the scrapes she's kep' me out of and pulled me out of, I should keep you settin' here all night. There was one more," he continued, "that struck me a good deal at the time. It was about money, like the fust one, in a different sort of way. It was durin' those days when specie was so skurce and high that it was quite a circumstance to get a piece of hard money. There come along a peddler in a smart red wagon, with all sorts of women's trash packed into it, and Gracie took it into her head to want some of his things. It happened to be her birthday that day, and, as she didn't often pester me about clothes, I told her to choose out what she wanted, up to five dollars' worth, and, if the feller could change me a twenty-dollar note, I'd pay for it. He jumped at it, sayin' he didn't count it any trouble at all to give change, the way some storekeepers did, and that he always kep' a lot on hand to oblige his customers. I will say for him that it seemed to me he give Gracie an amazin' big five dollars' worth, and when he come to make the change he handed out a ten-dollar gold piece, or what I then took to be such, as easy as if he'd found it growin' on a bush, and said nothin' whatever about the premium on it. Perhaps I'd ought to have mentioned it, but it seemed to me it was his business more'n mine: so I jest took it as if it was the most natural thing in life, and he went off. I thought I might as well as not get the premium on it before it went down the way folks said it was goin' to: so, after dinner, I harnessed up, and drove down to the post-office,--it was kep' in the drug-store then, the same as it is now,--and when I handed my gold piece to the postmaster, which was also the druggist, and said I'd take a quarter's worth of stamps, and I believed gold was worth a dollar fifteen just now, he first smelt of it, and then bit it, and then poured some stuff out'n a bottle onto it, and then handed it back to me with a pityin' smile that somehow riled me more'n a little, and he says, says he,--

"'Somebody's fooled you badly, Uncle Jabez. That coin's a counterfeit. Do you happen to know where you got it?'

"'I know well enough,' I says, and I expect I spoke pretty mad, for I _felt_ mad. 'I got it of a travellin' peddler, that's far enough away by this time, and if you're sure it's bad I'm that much out of pocket.' He seemed right concerned about it, and ast me if I hadn't no clue that I could track the peddler by; but I couldn't think of any, and I went home a good deal down in the mouth. But Gracie chirked me up, as she always does, bless her! and she made me a Welsh rabbit for supper, and some corn muffins, and a pot of good rich chocolate, by way of a change, and we agreed that, as she'd a pretty big five dollars worth and as the rest of the change was good, we'd say no more about it, for it would be like lookin' for a needle in a hay-stack to try to track him.

"'Why, father,' she says, 'I don't so much as know his name: do you?'

"I told her no, I didn't; that if I'd heard his name I disremembered it, but that I didn't think I'd heard it. And then that very night come another visit from mother, and she told me all about it. She come the way she always did, and when she spoke the last time, close to, as you may say, she says,--

"'I wouldn't give up that ten dollars so easy, if I was you, father. That peddler's name is Hanigan,--Elwood Hanigan,--and he'll be at the State Fair to-morrow. Now, do you go, and you'll find his red wagon with no trouble at all; and jest be right down firm with him, and tell him that if he doesn't give you good money in place of the bad he foisted off on you you'll show him up to the whole fair, and you'll see how glad he'll be to settle it.'

"And with that she laughed jest as natural as life, and I heard no more till Gracie knocked on my door in the morning."

"And did you go to the fair and find him and get your money back?" asked Birchard, who was interested in spite of his scepticism.

"I did, jest that," replied Uncle Jabez. "I got off bright and early, and, as luck would have it, I'd jest tied and blanketed my horse when that wonderful smart red wagon come drivin' in at the gate. I waited till he'd begun to pull his wares out and make a fine speech about 'em, and then I jest walked up to him, cool and composed, and give him his choice between payin' me good money for his bogus gold or hearin' _me_ make a speech; and you may jest bet your best hat he paid up quicker'n winkin'. Perhaps I'd ought to have warned folks ag'in' him as it was, but I had a notion he'd save his tricks till he got to another neighborhood; and it turned out I was right. He didn't give none of his gold change out that day. But you can see for yourself that if it hadn't been for Lavina he'd have come off winnin' horse in that race. That was always the way when mother was about: she had more sense in her little finger than I had in my whole body, and head too, for that matter."

"And you found that you really had not known the man's name until it was conveyed to you in the manner in which you have described?" asked the schoolmaster deferentially.

"Well, no," said Uncle Jabez. "When I saw his wagon the next day, I remembered of readin' his name in gilt letters on the side, tacked to some patent medicine he claimed to have invented; but I don't suppose I'd ever thought of it again if mother hadn't told it to me so plain."

The schoolmaster said nothing. He had his own neat little theories concerning all the manifestations which had been mentioned, but somehow the old man's guileless belief had touched him, and he had no longer any desire to shake it, even had it been possible to do so. But he could not help probing the subject a little further: so presently he asked, "And you've never spoken to her, never asked her if it were not possible for you to see as well as hear her?"

"Young man," said Uncle Jabez kindly, but solemnly, "there's such a sin as presumption, and there's some old sayin' or other about fools rushin' in where angels fear to tread. If you try to grab too much at once, you're apt to lose all. If it was meant for me to see mother as well as hear her, I _should_ see her; and if I was to go to pryin' round and tryin' to find out what's purposely hid from me, I make no doubt but I should lose the little that's been vouchsafed to me. But I'd far rather hear you ask questions like that than to have you throwin' doubt on the whole business, as you seemed inclined to do at fust."

"Look here," said Mr. Dickey briskly, "do you know it's well on to half-past ten? and we were to have the key at Pegram's by ten. I think we'd better do what there is to do, and clear out of this as quick as we know how, and mebbe some of us will wish before an hour's gone that we had Uncle Jabez's knack at makin' out a good story."

"You speak for yourself, Dickey," said Mr. Crumlish good-naturedly. "There's some of us that goes in and comes out, with nobody to care which it is, nor how long we stay; but freedom has its drawbacks, as well as other things."

The schoolmaster laughed at himself for striking a match as he turned the last light out, but he felt moving through his brain a vague wish that Uncle Jabez would break himself of that trick he had of gazing fixedly at nothing, and that other trick of stopping suddenly in the middle of a sentence to cock his head, as if he were hearing some far-away, uncertain sound.

MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.

FISHING IN ELK RIVER.

When a man has once absorbed into his system a love for fishing or hunting, he is under the influence of an invisible power greater than that of vaccine matter or the virus of rabies. The sporting-fever is the veritable malady of St. Vitus, holding its victim forever on the go, as game-seasons come, and so long as back and legs, eye and ear, can wrestle with Time's infirmities. It breeds ambition, boasting, and "yarns" to a proverbial extent, with a general disbelief in the possible veracity of a brother sportsman, and an irresistible; desire to talk of new and privately discovered sporting-heavens. The gold-seeker stakes his claim, the "wild-catting" oil-borer boards up his lot, the inventor patents his invention, and the author copyrights his brain-fruit; but the sportsman crazily tells all he knows. So the secret gets out, and the discoverer is robbed of his treasure and forced to seek new fields for his rod and gun.

Colonel Bangem had enjoyed a year's sport among the unvisited preserves of Elk River. Mrs. Bangem and Bess, their daughter, had shared his pleasures and acquired his fondness for such of them as were within feminine reach. Any ordinary man would have been perfectly satisfied with such company and delights; but no, when the bass began to leap and the salmon to flash their tails, the pressure was too great. His friends the Doctor and the Professor were written to, and summoned to his find. They came, the secret was too good to keep, and that is the way this chronicle of their doings happens to be written.

No sooner was the invitation received than the Doctor eased his conscience and delighted his patients by the regular professional subterfuge of sending such of them as had money to the sea-shore, and telling those who had not that they needed no medicine at present; the Professor turned his classes over to an assistant on pretext of a sudden bronchial attack, for which a dose of mountain-air was the prescribed remedy. And so the two were whirled away on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad across the renowned valley of Virginia and the eastern valley steps of the Alleghany summits, past the gigantic basins where boil and bubble springs curative of all human ills, down the wild boulder-tossed waters and magnificent cañons of New River, around mountain-bases, through tunnels, and out into the broad, beautiful fertility of the Kanawha Valley, until the spires of Charleston revealed the last stage of their railroad journey. When their train stopped, stalwart porters relieved them of their baggage and deafened them with self-introductions in stentorian tones: "Yere's your Hale House porter!" "I's de man fer St. Albert's!"

"It's no wonder," said the Doctor, as he followed the sable guide from the station to the river ferry, and looked across the Kanawha's busy flow, covered with coal-barges, steamboats, and lumber-crafts, to Charleston's long stretch of high-bank river front, "that Western rivers get mad and rise against the deliberate insult of all the towns and cities turning their backs to them. There is a mile of open front, showing the cheerful faces of fine residences through handsome shade-trees and over well-kept lawns; but here, where our ferry lands, and where we see the city proper, stoops and kitchens, stove-pipes and stairways, ash-piles and garbage-shoots, are stuck out in contempt of the river's charms and the city's comeliness."

"Stove-pipes and stairways have to be put somewhere," said the matter-of-fact Professor. "And the best way to turn dirty things is toward the water."

The ferry-boat wheezed and coughed and sidled across the river to a floating wharf, covered, as usual, with that portion of the population, white and black, which has no interest in the arrival of trains, or anything else, excepting meals at the time for them, but which manages to live somehow by looking at other people working.

"Give me," said the Professor, "the value of the time which men spend in gazing at what does not concern them, and, according to my estimate, I could build a submarine railroad from New York to Liverpool in two years and three months. What are those fellows doing with their huge barrels on wheels backed into the river?"

"Dat is de Charleston water-works, boss," answered the grinning porter. "Widout dem mules an' niggahs an' bar'ls dah wouldn't be 'nough water in dis town to wet a chaw tobacky."

A winding macadamized road leads up the river bank to the main street running parallel with it. There is a short cut by a rickety stairway, but, as some steep climbing has to be done before reaching the lower step, it is seldom used. These formerly led directly to the Hale House, a fine brick building, which faced the river, with a commodious portico, and offered the further attractions of a pleasant interior and an excellent table; but now a blackened space marked its site, as though a huge tooth had been drawn from the city's edge, for one morning a neighboring boiler blew up, carrying the Hale House and much valuable property with it, but leaving the owners of the boiler.

"Dat's where de Hale House was, boss, but it's done burned down. I's de porter yit. When it's done builded ag'in I's gwine back dar. Dis time I take you down to de St. Albert. I's used to yellin' Hale House porter so many years dat St. Albert kind chokes me."

So to the St. Albert went the Doctor and Professor, where they met with a home-like greeting from its popular host.

Wheeling was formerly the capital of West Virginia, but for good reasons it was decided to move the seat of government from "that knot on the Panhandle" to Charleston. A commodious building of brick and sandstone, unchristened as to style of architecture, has been erected for the home of the law-makers; and henceforth the city which started around the little log fort built in 1786 by George Glendermon to afford protection against Indians will be the seat of government for the great unfenced State of West Virginia. Its business enterprise and thrift, its excellent geographical and commercial position, its healthiness notwithstanding its bad drainage, or rather no drainage, have induced a growth almost phenomenal. Churches, factories, and commodious storehouses have spread the town rapidly over the beautiful valley in which it lies. The United States government has been lavish in its expenditure upon a handsome building for court, custom, and post-office purposes; and to it flock, especially when court is in session, as motley an assortment of our race as ever assembled at legal mandate. Moonshiners, and those who regard whiskey-making, selling, and drinking as things that ought to be as free as the air of the mountain and licenses as unheard-of impositions of a highly oppressive government, that would "tax a feller for usin' up his own growin' uv corn," and courts as "havin' a powerful sight uv curiosity, peekin' into other fellers' business," afford ample opportunities for the exercise of judicial authority.

A long mountaineer was before a dignified judge of the United States Court for selling liquor without a license. He had bought a gallon at a still,--as to the locality of which he professed profound ignorance,--carried it thirty miles, and peddled it out to his long-suffering and thirsty neighbors. Every native being a natural informer, the story was soon told: arrest followed, a march of fifty miles over the mountains, and a lengthy imprisonment before trial. Following the advice of his assigned counsel, he pleaded guilty. Being too poor to pay a fine, and having an unlimited family dependent upon their own exertions,--which comprises the sum of parental responsibility among the natives,--the judge released him on his own bail-bond, and told him to go home. He deliberately put on his hat, walked up to his honor, and said, "I say, jedge, I reckon you fellers 'ill give me 'nough money to ride hum an' pay fer my grub, 'cause 'tain't fair, noway. You fetched me clar down yere, footin' it the hull way, an' now you're lettin' me off an' tellin' me to foot it back. 'Tain't fair, noway. You-uns oughter pay me fer it." And he went off highly indignant at having his modest request refused.

There is much of the primitive not outgrown as yet by Charleston: it has put on a long-tailed coat over its round-about. The gossipy telephone is ahead of the street-cars; gas-works supply private consumers, while the citizens wade the unlighted streets by the glimmer of their own lanterns; innumerable cows contest the right of pedestrians to the board footways and what of pavement separates the mud-holes; an ice-manufactory supplies coolness to water peddled about in barrels; the officials outnumber the capacity of the jail; the ferry-facilities vary from an unstable leaky bateau to a dirty, open-decked dynamite steamboat, whose night-service is subject to the lung-capacity of the traveller hallooing for it, and the fares to necessities and circumstances; the fine brick improvements are flanked by frame tinder-boxes; the offal of the city has not a single relieving sewer: yet it is a beautiful, healthy place, and the chief city of the greatest mineral-district in the world.

Our travellers breakfasted on delicious mountain mutton and vegetables fresh from surrounding farms. Their host secured three men and a canoe to carry them up Elk River to Colonel Bangem's camp, at the cost of one dollar a day and "grub," or one dollar and a quarter a day if they found themselves, with the moderate charge of fifty cents a day for the canoe.

When the time arrived for starting, the Professor was missing. Bells were rung, servants were despatched to search the hotel for him, but he was not to be found. The Doctor grew impatient, but restrained himself until an uncoated countryman, who had just walked into town and was ready for a talk, told him that he "seed a feller, thet wuz a stranger in these parts, with a three-legged picter-gallery, chasin' a water-cart a right smart ways back in the town, ez I come in."

"That's he," said the Doctor. "He is crazy after pictures. I'll give you a dollar if you bring him to the hotel alive."

"Is he wicked?" asked the man.

"Generally," answered the Doctor, whose eyes began to twinkle; "but you get hold of his picture-gallery and run for the hotel: he will follow you. I often have to manage him that way."

"I'm minded to try coaxin' him in thet a-way fer a dollar. You jist take keer uv my shoes, an' I'll hev him yer ez quick ez Tim Price kin foot it, if he follers well an' hain't contrairy-like, holdin' back."

Tim Price relieved his feet of their encumbrances, and started. When his tall, gaunt figure had disappeared around the corner, the Doctor grew red in the face from an internal convulsion, and then exploded past all concealment of his joke.

"If you gentlemen," he said to the by-standers, "want to see some fun, just follow that man. I will stay here as judge whether the man brings in the Professor or the Professor brings in the man."

A good joke would stop a funeral in Charleston. The hotel was cleared of men in an instant to follow Tim and enjoy the hunt. Tim sighted the Professor about a quarter of a mile back in the town, A darky driving a water-cart was standing up on the shafts, thrashing his mule with the ends of his driving-lines, and urging it, by voice and gesture, to the highest mule-speed: "Git up! git up! you lazy old no-go! Git up! Don't you see dat picter-feller tryin' to took you an' me an' de bar'l? Git up! Wag yer ears an' switch yer tail. You're not gwine ter stan' still an' keep yer eyes on de instrement fer no gallery-man to took, 'less you's fix' up fer Sunday. Git up, you ole long-eared corn-eater!"

The Professor was keeping well up with the flying water-works. His hat was stuck on the back of his head, he carried his camera with its tripod spread ready for sudden action, and every step of his run was guided by thoughts of proper distance, fixed focus, and determination to have the water-works in his collection of instantaneous photographs. A turn in the street gave the Professor his opportunity: he darted ahead, set his camera, and took the whole show as it went galloping by, when he reclined against a fence while making the street ring with his laugh.

Tim Price, who was watching his chance, saw that it had come. He grabbed the camera, gave a yell of triumph, and faced for the home-run. He had not an instant to lose. The Professor sprang for his precious instrument. Tim's long legs carried him across the street, over a fence into a cross-cut lot, and away for the hotel at a mountaineer's speed. The Professor was small, but active as a cat. Where Tim jumped fences, the Professor squirmed through them; where Tim took one long stride, the Professor scored three short ones. Tim lost his hat, and the Professor threw off his coat as he ran. The main street was reached without perceptible decrease of distance between them; but there the pavements were something Tim's bare feet were not used to catching on, and the people something he was not used to dodging: he upset several, but dashed on, with his pursuer gaining on his heels. Men, women, dogs, and darkies turned out to witness the race or follow it. "Stop thief!" "Go it, Tim!" "You're catching him, stranger!" "Foot it, little one!" were cries that speeded the running. The Doctor stood waiting at the hotel door, laughing, shaking, and red as a veritable Bacchus. Tim Price banged the camera into him, whirled round suddenly, caught the Professor as he dashed at him, and held him in his powerful arms, squirming like an eel.

"Yere's your crazy man, stranger," said Tim, in slow, drawling tone. "I tell you he kin jest p'intedly foot it. Thar hain't been such a run in Kanoy County sence they stopped 'lectin' country fellers fer sheriff. I reckon I've arned thet dollar. What shall I do with the leetle feller?"

The Professor was powerless, but lay in Tim's arms biting, kicking, and curled up like a yellow-jacket interested with an enemy.

"Let him go," said the laughing Doctor. "He will stay with me now. He is not dangerous when I am about. Set him on his feet."

No sooner was the Professor deposited on the pavement than he dealt Tim a stinging blow which staggered him, and stood ready with trained muscles set for defence.

"Look yere, leetle un," said Tim, coolly and with great self-restraint, "'tain't fer the likes uv me to hit you, bein's you're a bit out in your top, but I'll gin you another hug ef you do that ag'in; I will, p'intedly."

In the good humor of the crowd, the mirth of the Doctor, and the latter's possession of the camera the Professor scented a joke, and at once saw his friend's hand in it. He joined in the laugh at his expense, and lengthened his friend's face by saying, "The Doctor having had his fun, he will now pay the bill at the bar for all of you: he pays all my expenses: so walk in, gentlemen."

The laws of hospitality west of the Alleghanies do not permit any one to decline an invitation, so the Doctor settled for the whole procession and paid Tim Price his well-earned dollar.

"Captain," said Tim to the hotel-proprietor, who had joined the crowd, "ef two fellers comes here from the East, one uv 'em ez round ez a punkin an' red ez a flannel shirt an' bald ez a land-tortle, an' t'other ez brown ez a mud-catty an' poor ez a razor-back hog, tell 'em I'm yere to pilot 'em up Elk to Colonel Bangem's caliker tents. He said they were ez green ez frogs, an' didn't know nothin' noway, an' fer me to take keer uv 'em. He don't reckon they'll come tell to-morrow. One uv 'em's a hoss-doctor, an' t'other's a perfessor uv religion, Colonel Bangem telled me. I dunno whether the feller's a circuit-rider er a rale preacher."

"That's the highly-illuminated pumpkin, my good man," said the Professor, pointing to the Doctor, "and I am Colonel Bangem's spiritual adviser. We got here a day sooner than we expected to."

"You don't say? May I never! An' the colonel never telled me nothin' nohow 'bout any one uv you bein' crazy. Howdee? How do you like these parts? Right smart town we've got yere, hain't it? I'll take keer uv you. There hain't no man on Elk River kin take keer uv you better nor Tim Price, ary time. I hain't much up to moon men, though. Thar's one feller up my way thet gits kinder skeery at the full uv the moon; but I hain't never tended him. I reckon I kin l'arn the job,--ez the ole boy said when his marm set him to mindin' fleas off the cat."

Tim Price was the hunter, boatman, fisherman, yarn-spinner, and character of his region, and Colonel Bangem's faithful ally in all his sports: the latter had therefore sent him to meet his friends on their arrival at Charleston, and he at once proceeded to take command of the whole party as a matter of course.

"I footed it over the mountains, and sent my boat the river way. Hit oughter be yere now: so we'll pack you men's tricks to the boats an' p'int 'em up-stream. It 'ill be sundown afore we git thar."

The party started from the hotel, the procession followed to see them off, and they were soon down the Kanawha and into the mouth of Elk at the point of the town. Log rafts, huge barges, miles of railroad-ties, laid-up steamers, peddling-boats, with their highly-colored storehouses, fishermen's scows, floating homely cabins alive with bare-legged children and idlers of the water-side, push-boats loaded to the edge of the narrow gunwales with merchandise for delivery to stores and dwellers far up the river, boats loaded with hoop-poles, grist, chickens, and the "home-plunder" of some mover to civilization, coming down the river from the mountain-clearing, and samples of every conceivable kind of the river's outpour, were tied to the banks or lazily floating on the currentless back-water from the Kanawha.

An old steamboat-captain once said of Elk that "it was the all-firedest river God ever made,--fer it rises at both ends and runs both ways to wunst." This is true, and is caused by the Kanawha, when rising, pouring its water into the mouth of Elk and reversing its current for many miles, while at the same time rain falls in the mountains, increasing the latter river's depth and velocity. Flour-mills, iron-foundries, saw-mills, woollen-mills, and barrel-factories extend their long wooden slides down to the river's edge, to gather material for their consumption. A railroad spans it with an iron trussed bridge, and the demands of wagon and foot-travel are met by an airy one suspended by cables from tower-like abutments on either side, both bridges swung high in the air, out of reach of flood and of the smoke-stacks of passing steam-craft.